CHAPTER XXVII.
The Answer When Aaron King and Conrad Lagrange entered the house to meet their callers from Fairlands Heights, the artist felt, oddly, that he was meeting a company of strangers.
The carefully hidden, yet--to him--subtly revealed, warmth of Mrs.Taine's greeting embarrassed him with a momentary sense of shame.

The frothing gush of Louise's inane ejaculations, and the coughing, choking, cursing of Mr.Taine,--whose feeble grip upon the flesh that had so betrayed him was, by now, so far loosed that he could scarcely walk alone,--set the painter struggling for words that would mean nothing--the only words that, under the circumstances, could serve.

Aaron King was somewhat out of practise in the use of meaningless words, and the art of talking without saying anything is an art that requires constant exercise if one would not commit serious technical blunders.

James Rutlidge's greeting was insolently familiar; as a man of certain mind greets--in public--a boon companion of his private and unmentionable adventures.

Toward the great critic, the painter exercised a cool self-restraint that was at least commendable.
While Aaron King, with James Rutlidge and Mr.Taine, with carefully assumed interest, was listening to Louise's effort to make a jumble of "ohs" and "ahs" and artistic sighs sound like a description of a sunset in the mountains, Mrs.Taine said quietly to Conrad Lagrange, "You certainly have taken excellent care of your protege, this summer.